Our New Marriage

If woman is married to a control freak that is unloving, she may find herself dreaming of being married to a kind and loving man.

Let’s suppose she is a believer and knows that divorce would be wrong.

She might find herself at times, secretly wishing he would die so she would be free from him and be able to marry a man who would be kind and loving.

In Romans 7:1-6, this is the analogy that Paul uses to show our former marriage to the Law and our new marriage to Christ.  Let me summarize them.

In verse 1, he shows the Law only has jurisdiction or dominion over living people.

The Law’s requirements remain in force as long as a person lives under its jurisdiction.

When a person dies, he passes out of the realm where that Law could have jurisdiction over him.

When we died with Christ, we also passed out of the realm where the Law holds sway.

In verses 2-3, Paul illustrates his point by using an illustration of marriage.

Only if her husband should die, was a woman free to marry someone else or she would be considered an adulteress.

Paul’s application here is this:

It is spiritual adultery if we are living under the power of sin and the Law thus walking by the flesh, since we are married to Christ.

If the husband in Paul’s illustration dies, there is a new freedom from the marriage law and the wife is free to re-marry.

The dissolving of a relationship by death makes possible a new relationship.

In verse 5, we see we are free from the Law through our death with Christ and are now married to Christ through our resurrection with Him.

The purpose of our new marriage to the risen Christ is producing the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

In verse 5, we see that while in our unsaved life, which was in the sphere of the flesh, we were married to the Law and it aroused our sinful passions.

The Law reveals sin and it energized and intensified our sinful passions, which only produced death.

If this is what the Law did in our unsaved life because we had no spiritual resources, why would we want to go back to our old marriage to the Law?

Our new marriage to Christ is much better!

In verse 6, we see the Law was powerless to release us from our fleshly and sinful passions, which were stirred up by the Law, so God released us from the Law through Christ.

By Christ’s death and our death with Him, we were put out of the sphere in which the Law operated.

We now serve in the power of the Holy Spirit, under His energy and control, not in our own energy, attempting to obey the Law.

We are not submitting to an external code, but to the internal Holy Spirit, living out the Christ-life through us.

Do’s and don’ts only charge the power of sin with new energy.

We are to approach life as an opportunity and challenge to let Christ express Himself through us.

This is newness of the Spirit which leads to victory.

There were two factory girls who met on the street after not having seen one another for some time.

“Where are you working now, Sue?” asked the one girl.

“Working?” said Sue, with a look of arrogant disdain.

“I’m not working – I’m married!”

The moral of the story is that we should give up working for righteousness, and realize we are married to Christ, receiving His overflowing life and love, which will produce the fruit of righteous in our hearts and lives.

The purpose behind our death to the Law was to make such a marriage relationship with Christ possible for us, so we day-by-day can produce spiritual fruit for God.

Blessings!
Pastor Ken Keeler, Director of Church Ministries